Why should the devil have all the good P.R. tactics?

I'm imagining Margaret Sanger on stage, donning a gag and standing stoically beside a man delivering her written speech to the crowd, in defiance of the arrest threat from the city of Boston.

The scene is an icon of the noble struggle against oppressive patriarchy.  It resonated perfectly with the inner sense of suppression that American young adults in the late 1920's were born into and against which they were ostentatiously rebelling.  It helped that Sanger, herself, was an outspoken member of that same segment and subculture, so the gesture was natural for her.  She didn't come up against the overarching problem in today's Western PR enterprise, namely, the reality that all public communication is intercultural.

And, as ever, the medium is the message.

As far as the public imagination is concerned, it didn't matter then, and it doesn't matter now whether or not the content of her message was rational, grounded, edifying, wise, loving, or good in any way.  It didn't matter then in seed form, and it doesn't matter now in its maturity, that the message would be integral to the development of the now culturally engrained worldview that allowed, propelled, and sustains the worst massacre in human history.

The devil gets this stuff.  A gifted musician, he weaves themes and knits phrases which later build and swell into an avalanche of emotion.  His timing is impeccable, his messaging is sweet and palatable.  And he leaves you wanting more. So much so, that after the first movement, he hardly has to do anything to encourage the growth of his insidious seed.  We humans take that ball and run with it to absurd ends, convinced that, somewhere along the way, we'll actually find more Turkish Delight.

[Ya, I know.  Too many metaphors.  But it's hard enough for me to find time to blog at all, let alone to go back and finesse and ....like.....EDIT.  So lay off.]

Anyway, without constructing an adequate argument, I am just sharing my thought on the matter.  I see so many PR debacles in the Christian world.  The good stuff gets buried or maligned by the world's (read satan's) super-oiled PR machine.  I'm not talking about Qura'n burnings.  That didn't have to get perverted and spun to be stupid.  Like Lady Gaga, it was born that way.  I'm talking about when good people actually follow the Holy Spirit and do the work to which God calls them.  When the Church exercises Her prophetic role in this dark world, and does so in faith, hope, and love, but gets dog-piled by the media and the propaganda machine.  Great PR is so much less vulnerable to those attacks, but great PR, we don't have.  We just don't.  The best Christian PR people work for those few (and largely useless) rich "christian" organizations who can afford them.

Because we're under attack ALL THE TIME, our prophetic voice calling out the infallible Truth that the world ignores out of active ignorance or passive deception too often ends up sounding like Jean-Luc Picard insisting despite tremendous torture and coercion  that "there.....are.....four......lights!".  He doesn't (and we don't) have the resources to muster up a better delivery than the salient Truth, prudentially and sparingly spoken.

And, as ever, the Medium is the Message.

God, help us.  And ask Gabriel to chip in, too.  Thanks.  Amen.